Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Fifth grade marks a pivotal year as children prepare for the academic and social challenges of middle school. As fifth grade ends, your child should be fluent in the following skills.
Listening Skills
- Listens and makes conclusions during subjects like math, science and social studies
- Understands subjects and topics being taught in class
Talking Skills
- Plans and makes class presentations
- Makes presentations interesting through use of expressions, gestures and inflection
- Participates in discussions in all core subjects
- Summarizes his or her thoughts with main points during discussions
- Explains information gathered during group activities
Reading Skills
- Reads fifth-grade-level books easily
- Reads and understands many types of writing
- Reads poetry and can discuss style and meaning
- Tells how characters and plots develop
- Uses words to guess meanings of new words (such as figuring out that “frigid” means cold since it’s similar to “refrigerator”)
- Decides which parts of a written piece are most important to read
- Learns about different author styles and use of words
- Uses facts from newspapers, magazines, Internet articles and books to back-up opinions
Writing Skills
- Writes for many different reasons
- Uses many different types of sentences
- Uses words well and correctly in writing
- Edits and revises drafts on paper and on computer
- Uses a computer to write short reports, stories, blogs and email messages
